Burningbird

The road goes on and on, and on and on

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 1, 2003

When I’m on the road, I’ll either sleep like a baby or toss and turn all night, and this trip is a tosser and turner. Normally I take great joy in road trips, but this one just isn’t clicking for me. It shows in my writing, and it showed in my driving, which was, frankly, pretty bad today. Not because of the car I was driving but because I kept doing stupid things. Stupid, stupid things.

I decided to see if I could wake up my interest in the trip by varying my route and going I70 through the Rockies to Castle Canyon in Utah, and then travel up I15 to Salt Lake City.

As I expected the scenery was incredible, and I’ve included some photos in this post. Note that the day was very hazy, so the colors and lines are muted. But I think you can see at least a glimpse of the beauty of the scenery of I70 west of Denver.

First comes the Rockies, and my roommates poor old van had a difficult time making the steep grade. I was further slowed because around every corner is another breathtaking moment, and by the time I entered Utah, I was far behind my scheduled arrival in Nevada tonight.

Utah was hot, hot, hot — 105 degrees F. But again, around every corner was another vista, formation, bit of color what have you that I had to explore and capture. Even when it meant walking around in the desert and around rocks at these temperatures.

(One legacy of this adventure — a headache that began with the altitude change in Colorado and was continued with the temperatures in Utah.)

The oddest thing happened along I70 just before making the turn to I15 to head north — these bugs were crawling across the road, big ones that looked like a cross between a giant red bee and some kind of beetle. They were a dark reddish brown, all one color, and they crawled quite quickly. I would estimate their size at 1-2 inches long. I tried not to run any over, but it was impossible as more appeared as I traveled.

Now, what was even more disconcerting is that several ‘attacked’ the van as I drove past, or at least, that’s what it looked like. They hopped at the van as it went by. To me this suggests an attack. Perhaps they’re a hitchhiking species.

The further I traveled the more bugs, until at one bridge, there were literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, crawling across the road. I never, in my life, wanted a car to work as I wanted the van to work today. Do not break down, I found myself whispering.

I have no idea what these bugs are, and have never experienced anything like this. True, I’ve had little sleep the last few days, but I’m not imagining the critters. At least, I hope I’m not — I still have several hundred miles to drive. I know that I’ll have nightmares tonight from this one, which is probably why I’m still up writing this post. If anyone knows what these things are, please, please, let me know.

I ended up getting into Salt Lake City at 9:30. Bone tired. I have another day of driving tomorrow, which I am not looking forward to. However, I’ll have time in San Fran to rest up before trip home, the fogs are in this week (my favorite San Fran weather), and I won’t need to make another run to the coast for anything other than pleasure in the future.

At this point, though, what I want is to stay close to home. To continue my exploration of Missouri’s hikes and culture; to work on the Wayward Weblogger co-op server (the neighborhood is filling nicely); to contribute to Echo and some other RDF projects. Not to mention write and take more bandwidth stealing photos.

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I don’t want to travel. I don’t want to go somewhere. If a rolling stone gathers no moss, then I want to grow some moss on my butt.

Travel

Checking in

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date June 30, 2003

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I ended up stopping for the night in Limon, Colorado, at this little oasis of hotels/eateries/gas stations. The motel was a bit pricey, but as an added bonus – high speed internet! In the middle of Colorado cattle country.

I have found that I’ve finally reached a saturation point in this particular route. All the states between Missouri and California are very nice, lovely, friendly and interesting – but after this trip, I don’t want to see any of them again. Well, at least for a good long while.

Uneventful trip other than a car in front of me blowing a tire out. They managed it like a pro. Hope that never happens to me. I did make excellent time, but today’s miles are catching up tonight. You all would recognize the feeling – tired and disoriented. I hate that feeling.

The decision for tomorrow is whether to go up I15 to catch I80 in Salt Lake City, or to take I25 and catch it in Cheyenne. This is the shorter route, but I haven’t been in I15 for ages, and it’s very pretty. Rocky Mountains.

Catching up on weblog reading, I can see some disagreement that the Echo project is even occurring. This isn’t surprising, but it shouldn’t be happening. Echo is open to everyone, and all input is welcome. People can involve themselves if they want, or ignore if they don’t. This is the weblogging way to run a project of this nature.

I was going to make several detailed comments on this, but they would serve no positive purpose. Instead, I’ll continue my support of Echo, help when I can, and focus on photos and other writing.

See you in a couple of days in San Francisco.

PS Quick update before I reluctantly pull my hands away from the computer and start today’s drive: Who’s up for working on a RDF vocabulary of Echo with me? Not as a syndication format, but a full vocabulary, for integration with other RDF-enabled vocabularies? There is this but more in line with co-existence with the syndication format. However, I think there’s enough data in the data model to start the vocabulary now without waiting on the syndication effort – the vocabulary should derive from the model, and mappings developed later.

Has someone started this already? If so, can you paste a link to effort in my comments?

Second Update Started wiki page for this effort.

outdoors Photography Places

Water, water everywhere

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date June 27, 2003

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I spent the afternoon and early evening at the Busch Wilderness Center, exploring the 35 lakes contained within the area. For an out-of-water nymph like myself, just drifting between the lakes — small and large — was like coming home. What was especially delightful, wonderful, and surprising is that each lake has it’s own personality — no two were alike.

Most of the lakes weren’t much more than larger ponds, though Lake 33 was quite large, with it’s own overflow area, associated stream and wetland. Big enough for several boats, and the Wilderness Center rents boats for fishermen — fishing is quite popular, as you can imagine.

Some of the lakes were pure catch and release, while others you could keep what you caught up to a limit. No bass under 18 inches, I remember that one, but what the heck are ‘crappies’? Regardless of the rules, the fishermen I saw seemed to be happy just to be out, in the sun, line in the water, eyes half shut looking at the far shore.

But what the heck are crappies?

There were so few people that many of the lakes I visited had no one else around and I could sit by the water, watching the birds and the fish jumping at the dragon flies overhead. The weather was warm but not hot, and though there was some humidity I think I’ve adapted to it, because I’m finding that I enjoy it.

It’s a serene feeling, walking by the lake, warm humid air wrapping around you, sweat on your upper lip, and trickling down the small of your back — holding the cool breezes blowing in across the water.

I was surprised at the plant life at the Center, and I’ve seen enough Missouri Green to know what I should have expected. I expected the bushes and trees and grasses, but not the tiger lilies, yellow daisies, purple thistles, and pink primroses.

Still, the stars of this show were the lakes, bright sapphires among the green.

The road leading to all of the lakes is yet more crushed limestone, with some pretty significant pot holes. If the view didn’t slow you down, or the road didn’t do the trick, the baby rabbits that positively crawled all over the place would. I got to the point that I almost ran off the road, peering into the bushes on either side to see if a bunny was going to run in front of the car.

Can you imagine how bad you’d feel, running over a baby bunny? Well, I can. I got so paranoid at one point, I stopped for a brown leaf in the road.

I didn’t walk through the trails too much, because they were so badly overgrown. Not being afraid to walk during the summer is one thing — walking into a thicket of tics is another. My mama raised no fool.

But there was an honest to goodness stand of pines, I had to explore. It was so unusual to see the tall evergreen tress, with little of the traditional Missouri undergrowth. I’ve become so used to the persistent, all over pervasive green.

But, back to the water. Water water, everywhere.

Me and my love of water. I can’t go near water without using all of my ‘film’ — space on my digital chip — on pictures of the water, near the water, boats on the water, and so on. Cute bunnies and pretty flowers may come and go, but there’s always more room for yet another reflection, or another boat.

There’s an echo with Echo

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date June 26, 2003

Joe Shelby, in the comments associated with my last posting made a good point about “Echo” as name of this weblogging initiative:

Echo is already a name for a product, a Java web application framework, that just released its 1.0 earlier this month, and very nicely under the LGPL license. By choosing “Echo”, the Wiki participants have effectively hijacked that name and may potentially destroy a product from a company doing TheRightThing ™, before that product even gets off the ground.

I posted a note at the wiki about this. I asked that the members form a consensus that they’re willing to use a name that could conflict with another newly released technology. This did start another discussion page.

Wikis are geared to fast, fast, fast. You have to hit the ground running, and be ready to move. Too much for this SysAdmin wore out from getting the Burningbird Network Co-op going (having fun, though). However, in this particular instance, I can also see the power of a wiki.

To me, what brings this all together is combining the technology: wiki to do the actual collaborative work; and weblog to summarize and involve others, to highlight specific points, and make specific persistent comments.

I’m getting a bit burned out on tech at the moment, and need to go back to literature, writing, funnies, life, politics, and photos – but I did want to take a moment to say that I think the wiki combined with weblog approach is very sexy.

Technically speaking. No worries, I’m not that far gone.

Reply from other project:

I do greatly appreciate you asking us before using the name, and
apologize for not having a positive answer. I’d request that you not
name your project Echo. I think the possibility of confusion is too
high, given that both projects are frameworks for building Web-based
applications. I realize that finding a name is very difficult to do (it
took what seemed like forever to settle upon “Echo” in our case).

I am not a lawyer, but I believe that I am required to inform you that
NextApp has a pending trademark registration on the term “Echo” in the
application of “A computer software framework/library used by software
developers for the creation of Internet-and Web-based applications.” It
is my understanding that I am required to state such information in
these circumstances in order to have our trademark be
considered valid, as trademarks must be actively defended. I apologize
again for even mentioning this as a response to your friendly request,
and only state this information because I believe I’m legally obligated
to do so.

I would say that Joe Shelby should take a bow for a good call on this one.

Weblogging

The Echo Project for Poets

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date June 25, 2003

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying

from Lord Tennyson’s “The Splendor Falls”

If one could typographically represent a blur, then that’s what I would use now to annotate the Echo Project – an online, collaborative, and extremely fast paced effort to define a conceptual data model of a weblog, and then to define politically neutral interoperability functionality, such as weblogging API and syndication format.

The effort has had some discussion in weblogs, beginning with Sam Ruby and continuing elsewhere, but much of the work has occurred in the project wiki, a collaborative editing environment.

One only has to look at the change log to see the number of edits to realize that this is not an environment for the cautious, the tame, or the wiki-challenged (or for those who want to sleep or eat, either). I’m not necessarily cautious or tame, but I do raise my hand for being wiki-challenged. Still, there are points that are solidifying out at the wiki, and I thought to duplicate these here in a format that, if nothing else, will help me understand what it’s all about.

The motivation: (also see wiki:Motivation) I don’t think there’s a one of us who enjoys the battles about weblogging APIs, or RSS, or import/export between weblogging products. Though it is the techies who have to deal with the specifics, these discussions impact us all. Every time a battle rages, we have to stop what we do, which is writing our weblog essays and entries, and add support for yet another button, link, or must have dohicky.

We have to support both RSS 2.0 and RSS 1.0. We have to be able to move our Blogger posts to Movable Type, and our MT posts to pMachine. We have to support comments/trackback/RSS/whatever, because people want to respond, comment, suggest, rant, praise, read, and read more easily.

Still, there are the webloggers, or personal journalists, or what have you that don’t and won’t support these things. They make their pages by hand, eschew comments, and answer with “track who?” This effort doesn’t impact on them, nor should it – the motivation behind this effort isn’t to create a jail about what we do, and how we do it. It’s to provide guidelines for the toolmakers so that all the tools we use, regardless of the tools we use, work together.

The conceptual data model. The question really is, what pieces of data are mandatory in order to meet the needs of a weblog entry? Cutting through the tool specific needs, the group seems to have settled on the following data items and their associated definitions:

Author: There is exactly one Author of an Entry, and that Author is identified by a non-empty name and an optional URI of a person, organization, or system. (A UniformResourceIdentifier (URI) is a short string that identifies a Web resource).

Permalink: The persistent URL for the entry on the Web. There is some debate still going on with this, but looks like ‘permalink’ is really being redefined to be a unique identifier of the weblog entry; and that both a URL and a URI (Unique Resource Identifier) will be required. For instance, this weblog entry has a URL for the individual item (page), and also a post or entry identifier, which would be the URI.

Publication date: This is the date the entry was “published”; the date used to decide where the entry goes in Movable Type and Blogger. The use of the weblogging tools is, I’m assuming nothing more than a reference point. This definition could use some work, but the consensus seems to be heading towards the date that the blogger specifies the entry was published, not the tool and not an automatic timestamp.

Content items: There can be more than one content item and associated with each is: media type (i.e. JPEG, MOV), language (i.e. ENGLISH), and the actual content. There was at one point debate that a welog entry doesn’t have to have any content, but I think that got shot down.

There’s discussion still continuing on these items, but it does look like we’re starting to see some stability. Someone even created an example data page, and as this shows, the only items still being debated are having a last modified date, and that URI of the entry (itemid). Additionally, someone else created a entry model that seems to have captured all the data being discussed, not just the required. If you’re not a techie and want to see what’s happening in a nutshell – go here.

Now, these are the required items, but not the only items. However, the other data items are considered extensions, and therefore optional. This includes:

license – copyright of item (see Creative Commons)
security – PGP Key
metadata – title, subtitle, summary, optional timestamps, version id, and all contributors (in case there are additional authors)

I’ve only quoted the extensions where consensus has been reached. There are other efforts.

Now, what’s next? After the data is agreed on?

Well there’s a Road Map that details what’s to happen. Taking a snapshot, it says:

Decide on the conceptual model of a log entry. ConceptualModel
Decide on a syntax for this model. SyntaxConsiderations (You are here.)
Build a syndication format using this syntax.
Build an archiving format using this syntax.
Build a weblog editing protocol using this syntax (the Echo API).

What does this mean to you, the weblogger? Especially if you’re not into the technology? Well, if all major vendors of weblogging products– and that includes aggregators, weblogging tools, weblog search and popularity sites – buy into this the following could happen:

– Syndication Both RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 would be replaced by the Echo syndication syntax, and you would only have to provide one syndication file. In addition, aggregators would only have to code to one syndication format. If there’s any pushback here at all, it’s that the tool vendors will most likely want versioning on this process, as well as some slow down – none of them wants to spend their lives recoding for daily updates.

– Import/Export All weblogging tools would support the same import/export format, which means you could easily move between different versions of weblogging tools. To my friends in the audience moving from Blogger to MT or other tools now – your job would be much easier.

– Common API All weblogging tools and perhaps peripheral tools would support a common API. This means, at a glance, we could post trackbacks to all weblog posts regardless of toll. But more, this also means that you could use any weblogging tool front end to post weblog posts to any weblogging back end. This opens the door to a new set of tools, as well as new technologies to work on top of them – audio/video posts, posting from email, posting from your phone, and so on.

This is the biggie. This is the grand banana. This is where the rubber hits the road. Here’s a scenario for you: you’re on a road trip and you’re writing to your desktop weblogging front end tool (someone else is driving we hope). You put the post in send mode and when you computer finds a passing WiFi signal, quick as can be, your entry is posted. Or don’t bother with the computer, post with your cellphone. Of find a kiosk at a rest area along the way, and send a post, annotated with your map location.

Doesn’t matter your tool – works with all of ‘em.

Of course, this is all supposing that our fictitious weblogger is a wee bit obsessive, and not that any of us are – not us – but it is fun to think of the fanciful situations in which a person could post, isn’t it?

Mine is that I’m in a deep submersible, hunting the Colassal Squid, and I’m blogging the encounter just as I’m about to be swallowed. No! Wait! After I’ve been swallowed!

“May be quiet for a while, I was just swallowed by a squid…”